GOP Rejects Senate Democrat Attempts To Steer Dollars To Teachers

TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS- Senate Democrats tried and failed Tuesday to fund teacher pay and other needs, as Republicans insisted such issues should wait until a new budget is crafted next year.

The attempt is the latest by Democrats in the House and Senate to amend House Bill 1007, which allows six university construction projects to be paid in cash, rather than from borrowing money, using nearly $290 million of the state’s surplus.

Tuesday, Senate Democrats took three swings at the bill, seeking amendments that would boost teacher pay, fund maternal and newborn health needs and increase reimbursements for county jails that are housing state inmates. All were defeated on 40-10 party-line votes.

In the first of two amendments she offered, Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, sought to cut $100 million from a nearly $1 billion yearly payment towards a teacher pension fund and use it instead to increase teacher pay now, rather than waiting until next year as Gov. Eric Holcomb has proposed.

“Our point is this: we have a lot of options, we could start this year with this teacher pay increase, and get our teachers started back to where they should be,” Tallian said.

She rebuffed Republican arguments that this would hurt pensions, saying it would only move back the date when the pre-1996 pension plan is fully funded by six years.

Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, called Tallian’s proposal “the defining amendment of the session.”

How teachers are treated in Indiana, he said, was the issue that brought 15,000 people in protest to the Statehouse on its November organizational day meeting. Teachers have complained of stagnant pay, and also having their evaluations and pay tied to student standardized test outcomes – an issue that is addressed in another bill, House Bill 1002 which is awaiting a hearing in the Senate.

Sen. Ryan Mishler, the Bremen Republican who is the chief sponsor of HB 1007 in the Senate, argued that now is not the time to address issues that impact the budget.

“The six projects in this bill were actually in the (2019) budget bill and I think this proposal should be part of the budget discussion next year,” Mishler said of the teacher pay amendment.

Sen. Jean Breaux, D-Indianapolis, proposed an amendment that would take $4 million from the state’s surplus in order to help communities provide prenatal and postpartum care.

Breaux said 33 counties in Indiana offer no maternity services, forcing mothers to travel to other counties to receive maternal care.

She noted Indiana has the seventh highest mortality rate for babies in the nation, and was the 48th worst state for maternal mortality rates.

Breaux, one of only four black state senators, said she felt personally affected because African-American babies are twice as likely to die than white babies, and African-American mothers are 243% more likely to die than white mothers.

Breaux said the amendment would also extend postpartum and prenatal care on Medicaid up to one year, instead of 60 days. This extension would ensure the health of babies and mothers.

But again, Mishler argued that these issues should be address next year in the budget debate, not now.

Tallian also sought an amendment aimed to raise county sheriff reimbursements for housing state inmates in county jails to $45 a day. Last year, Tallian’s proposal of the same reimbursement increase cleared the Senate, but was cut out of the final version of the budget.

Mishler, however, said that budget caps reimbursements at $30 million and that “no matter what the per diem is, they only have $30 million to spend with no augmentation.”

Victoria Ratliff is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.